IGIC Michael Atkinson fired for doing his job...

[edwardmurphy]

Pandemics provide great cover for firing a guy for exposing your illegal acts. Or as Atkinson put it:

"It is hard not to think that the President's loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General, and from my commitment to continue to do so. I was legally obligated to ensure that whistleblowers had an effective and authorized means to disclose urgent matters involving classified information to the congressional intelligence committees, and that when they did blow the whistle in an authorized manner, their identities would be protected as a guard against reprisals."

This is blatant corruption. Again.

[RickD]

To counter Ed’s left-leaning bias, here’s a conservative-biased view:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/06/wh ... -be-fired/

[Philip]

Ed, is politics all you ever think about? If that's where your hopes are for the future - well, how bleak and depressing!

[RickD]

Ed, is politics all you ever think about? If that's where your hopes are for the future - well, how bleak and depressing!

His entire purpose on this website, is to put down president Trump. Does anyone recall a single post where Edwardmurphy criticized President Obama?

[edwardmurphy]

Ed, is politics all you ever think about? If that's where your hopes are for the future - well, how bleak and depressing!

Politics is all I post about in the Politics and World Events forum. That' the only place you and I interact, so I can see how you might get the impression that it's all I think about, but it's not. I think about plenty of things. I just don't post about them here because they're not relevant to the stated purpose of this particular space.

My post wasn't especially political. I reported a fact, then posited an entirely reasonable explanation for that fact. If you guys would prefer to ignore that fact and don't wish to discuss corruption at the highest level of government then that's fine.

[RickD]

Ed, is politics all you ever think about? If that's where your hopes are for the future - well, how bleak and depressing!

Politics is all I post about in the Politics and World Events forum. That' the only place you and I interact, so I can see how you might get the impression that it's all I think about, but it's not. I think about plenty of things. I just don't post about them here because they're not relevant to the stated purpose of this particular space.

My post wasn't especially political. I reported a fact, then posited an entirely reasonable explanation for that fact. If you guys would prefer to ignore that fact and don't wish to discuss corruption at the highest level of government then that's fine.

Ed,

I hate to break it to you, but your opinions aren’t the same thing as facts.

You have a serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

You are opposite of Ablecainsbrother, but just as bad.

[edwardmurphy]

Atkinson was fired without cause. That's fact. He was fired because he passed the whistleblower's report to Congress, as the law dictated that he must.

And speaking of Trump firing inspectors general without cause - other than because they have the authority to oversee his actions and report corrupt activity - he just canned another one.

Again, this is blatant corruption. The President is literally dismantling all of the checks and balances right in front of us.

[RickD]

Atkinson was fired without cause. That's fact. He was fired because he passed the whistleblower's report to Congress, as the law dictated that he must.

And speaking of Trump firing inspectors general without cause - other than because they have the authority to oversee his actions and report corrupt activity - he just canned another one.

Again, this is blatant corruption. The President is literally dismantling all of the checks and balances right in front of us.

Repeating your opinion, doesn’t make it a fact.

[Kurieuo]

The sky is falling.

[edwardmurphy]

Repeating your opinion, doesn’t make it a fact.

That comma doesn't belong there. See, Phil? I also think about grammar.

The sky is falling.

Schools have been closed nationwide for nearly a month. Parks, playgrounds, beaches, and businesses are closed. The roads are empty.

In the last 30 days we've gone from 500 cases of coronavirus to 400,000, but testing still isn't up to speed so we can assume that the numbers are higher. Deaths are pushing 13,000 but apparently coroners can't get tests so there are cases where death is likely to be due to complications related to covid-19 but they won't know for sure for a while. In other words the number of infected and the number of fatalities, while frighteningly high, are also artificially low due to inadequate testing. Hospitals are on the verge of collapse all over the country, and freezer trucks are being used as temporary morgues. We currently have the worst outbreak in the industrialized world, and it's not even close. Italy is in second place, and we have triple their number of infected.

In the last 6 weeks the Dow has lost 8,000 points. That's despite the Fed lowering rates twice. The stimulus package seems to have slowed the crash down, but lots of people who would know are saying that it'll get worse before it gets better.

In the last 2 weeks we've had 10 million new unemployment claims, and the economy has just about ground to a halt. This week's unemployment figures will be out on Thursday morning. My guess is that they'll be terrible and that the market will react profoundly negatively. We're now in a recession which could well turn into a depression.

And now Jared Kushner is apparently in charge of our coronavirus response? WTF...?

And hidden by all the smoke of the dumpster fire that has engulfed our nation, Trump is picking off inspectors general who might have otherwise put a check on his ability to do whatever he feels like, laws and norms be damned. That wouldn't be so bad if what he wanted to do was read his intelligence briefings and prepare for potential pandemics, but unfortunately that's not among his interests. By the way, this is my favorite part of that fact-filled opinion piece:

Trump would later complain that he had been deceived by the Chinese. “I wish they could have told us earlier about what was going on inside,” he said on March 21. “We didn’t know about it until it started coming out publicly.”

If Trump truly was so trustingly ignorant as late as January 22, the fault was again his own. The Trump administration had cut U.S. public-health staff operating inside China by two-thirds, from 47 in January 2017 to 14 by 2019, an important reason it found itself dependent on less-accurate information from the World Health Organization. In July 2019, the Trump administration defunded the position that embedded an epidemiologist inside China’s own disease-control administration, again obstructing the flow of information to the United States.

Look at that, the Donald [love] us again...

So yeah, K, if there was ever a time to say that the sky is [love] falling this is it.

[Kurieuo]

Are you saying that this will stop any sort of impeachment over Trump's mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak?

You forget to also add that Trump is killing people by irresponsibly rolling out hydroxychloroquine. And, as just came out, he's actually invested in a manufacturer of such, so he's just profiting while killing people.

Definitely need another enquiry. I can't see how people can just turn a blind eye to it all.

[edwardmurphy]

Are you saying that this will stop any sort of impeachment over Trump's mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak?

What I'm saying is that Trump takes a decidedly shady approach to governing, and firing the people in charge of oversight opens the door for all kinds of corrupt acts to go unreported and uncontested. Any time a public official is able to do whatever he wants with no oversight it's a bad thing. Most Americans once agreed with that sentiment.

You forget to also add that Trump is killing people by irresponsibly rolling out hydroxychloroquine. And, as just came out, he's actually invested in a manufacturer of such, so he's just profiting while killing people.

There doesn't seem to be much of anything to the story about him profiting - yes, I fact check it all - but yeah, he should probably shut the hell up about hydroxychloroquine and leave it to the doctors to decide how to treat the disease.

Check out this article in the NY Post. The headline is "Medical group endorses anti-malarial drug treatment for coronavirus patients." Seems to support Trump's insistance that everybody should be using the stuff, even if they have no symptoms, no?

Ok, now read the article. This should pop out at you:

The Thoracic Society said its guidelines are based on input from an international task force comprised of doctors from medical centers that are currently treating COVID-19 patients.

The medical group said evidence about the impact of hydroxychloroquine is “contradictory” but it is worth experimenting with during a public health crisis to treat very sick patients.

“We believe that in urgent situations like a pandemic, we can learn while treating by collecting real-world data,” said Dr. Kevin Wilson, chief of guidelines and documents at the American Thoracic Society.

“There are in vitro studies that suggest that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have activity against SARS-CoV-2019, the virus that causes COVID-19,” Wilson said.

But he also said several controlled trials from China and France “all have serious flaws and inconsistent findings. … Thus, the bottom line is, whether hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine confer benefits to patients with COVID-19 are unanswered questions.”

In other words, they don't know that it works and the data so far is contradictory, but theses are desperate times so it's acceptable to run trials on patients with Covid-19 pneumonia, provided they're willing to give informed consent to be guinea pigs. Also, that's a pretty irresponsible clickbait headline, but whatever, the Post is a rag.

That's not how Trump is saying people should be using it, though. He's been saying that asymptomatic, or even undiagnosed people should consider taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure. That's a very, very different position than the one taken by doctors, researchers, and, y'know, experts. So yeah, Donald Trump should stick to giving advice about things that he knows something about, instead of standing at the podium and suggesting that desperate, frightened people try a drug that could harm them and might not help them because he, as a NYC real estate developer, has a hunch it could work.

I have to say, K, you set a stunningly low bar when it comes to what constitutes responsible behavior from elected officials.

Definitely need another enquiry. I can't see how people can just turn a blind eye to it all.

I know that you're making an attempt at irony, but you're right, there should be an enquiry. If Trump's failure to act contributed to the collapse of the economy and the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans that seems like it might merit looking into.

[Hortator]

Ed,

https://www.businessinsider.com/things- ... 2020-4?amp

I get that you are pretty much laid off as a sub, but there are much healthier things to do with your newly-found free time.

[edwardmurphy]

Ed,

https://www.businessinsider.com/things- ... 2020-4?amp

I get that you are pretty much laid off as a sub, but there are much healthier things to do with your newly-found free time.

Hi, Hortense.

As I told Phil, it might seem to you like all I do is talk about politics, but that's because this is the only context in which we ever interact. This forum takes up, at most, a couple of hours of my time per week. I can easily manage to lead a full and productive life while remaining informed and offering the occasional political opinion.

As far as filling time, no worries, it's full. I'm not a sub - I work in human services - but yeah, I'm currently on furlough. That's actually lucky, since my daughters are currently on furlough from kindergarten, preschool, gymnastics, swimming, and soccer. That means that from about 7 am to 8 pm I'm teaching remote kindergarten and preschool to my daughters, doing art projects, taking bike rides, making meals and snacks, doing strength and conditioning with my oldest, who's a competitive gymnast, brushing, bathing, cleaning, and generally running my ass off. I live in a great town with tons of entertainment options, but at the moment it's all closed.

My wife and I actually watched Tiger King a couple weeks back. Bunch of horrible people, but entertaining as trainwrecks go. I've been watching Babylon Berlin and Counterpart lately. Both are good. And if I have nothing better to do I like building scale models - scifi and WWII aircraft mostly. I'm hoping to do a bit of fly fishing later in the month, but that seems like a stretch at the moment. Oh, and video games are good. I'm currently revisiting the Half-Life franchise. Classic.

Anyway, don't worry yourself on my account. I have plenty of interests and plenty to do.

[Philip]

Ed, if you'll notice, after B.W. left, few here are rabidly on about politics. In fact, with the forum's stated purpose to be about ifluencing people to discover Christ, I"m pretty uncomfortable when it's so often about politics. But when your posts are so filled with an obsession and intense criticisms almost entirely concerning the president and his party - and rarely any serious criticisms about your favored party and its politicians - well, it comes off as a hyper bias and an obsession. This always concerns me about people whom are always on about politics - not terribly different from that one obsessed with Q. Politicians are humans - they all have many flaws. So, when I see someone just on about this or that group, but clearly defensive or silent upon their own favorites, well - it just comes off as relentless and not very balanced.